Room Coverage Attach | ClearOne comm Tabletop Conference Phones

»Noise Cancellation: Most rooms contain ambient noise produced by HVAC systems, fluorescent lights, projectors, computers, etc. Noise cancellation identifies these sounds and removes them. Unlike many competitive products, ClearOne uses a digital analysis technique that discriminates the talker’s voice from ambient room noise and only applies noise cancellation to the ambient room noise. This allows the audio to pass to the far side in a pristine condition.

»First Microphone Priority (CLEAREFFECT™): When multiple microphones are active simultaneously in a conference phone, voice signals arrive at different microphones at different times due to sound reflection from walls, ceilings or other surfaces. This causes sound distortion, which is often described as a “hollow” or “tunnel” sound. ClearOne’s First Microphone Priority technology minimizes this distortion by using an intelligent voice detection method to activate only one microphone at a time based on proximity to the person speaking.

ROOM COVERAGE (“ATTACH”)

One of the most important considerations when installing conference phones in a room is making sure that the room receives proper coverage. All participants should be close enough to a microphone to be heard and close enough to a loudspeaker to hear.

For a small conference room with six or eight participants, a single, high-quality conference phone should be adequate. However, for larger rooms or rooms with long or u-shaped tables, a single conference phone simply cannot provide adequate coverage— either for microphones or for loudspeakers.

Our competition’s approach to this challenge is to add extension mics connected to the phone. This is only a partial solution as it only adds two more microphones. The system still has only one loudspeaker and one dial pad. This configuration cannot adequately cover a long, u-shaped, or square conference table. Where would you place the equipment so that everyone can hear and be heard? Most work-arounds (putting the phone on a stool and the mics on the tables, etc.) are kludgy at best.

A much better approach is the one offered by our MAXAttach products which daisy-chain entire phones together and spread them out across the table. The wired MAXAttach products support up to four connected units (MAX Wireless can daisy-chain two units). And this solution is still less expensive than the competition.

With MAXAttach, since every phone has three mics (with 360° pickup), a large loudspeaker, and a dial pad, units can be placed such that all participants are close to a phone. In a full four-phone MAXAttach system, users would have 12 microphones and four loudspeakers distributed throughout the room—no other product can even come close to that level of room coverage.

Whether analog or IP, MAXAttach is extremely easy to connect. The base unit contains jacks for power, the incoming phone line (either analog or Ethernet), and the connection out to the MAX phone. Each phone in the group has a ‘Line In’ and ‘Line Out’ jack—you just link from one phone to the next.

The advantage of having dial pads on each attached phone is often overlooked. But since the phones work together as a single system, any user can easily press Mute for a quick offline conversation, change the volume, dial the call, etc.

PRICE

MAX conference phones are a much better value, ranging anywhere from $100 to $350 less than the comparable Polycom product.

WARRANTY

ClearOne offers a full two-year warranty with all of our conferencing products. The competition offers only one year.